Résumé : The human brain has an astonishing ability to recognize faces. Yet, there is still very little agreement in the scientific community about how this fundamental brain function should be optimally measured. Here I will advocate the use of fast periodic visual stimulation with a variety of methods to capture the human brain’s efficient, automatic and rapid visual discrimination and generalization processes subtending face recognition.

Résumé : Functional neuroimaging studies of time perception frequently employ duration judgement tasks (“is this stimulus shorter/longer than another ?”), which typically identify a frontostriatal network for timing (SMA, inferior frontal cortex, basal ganglia). Yet duration judgements are not the only way of measuring how accurately time is perceived. Being able to predict when relevant events are likely to occur allows us to orient attentional resources to the predicted moment in time, thereby enhancing how quickly and accurately events are processed. Speeded response times (RT) to temporally predictable events are therefore another, more indirect, measure of the internal representation of time. Indeed, they may even be a more suitable method for studying timing in cognitively fragile populations. In contrast to duration judgement tasks, the performance benefits of temporal predictability implicate left parietal cortex in a context-independent manner. Neuroanatomical differences in duration judgement versus temporal prediction paradigms reflect distinct functional mechanisms for processing the same underlying representation of time, which itself may be represented more fundamentally in context-specific sensorimotor processing regions of the brain.

Résumé : What determines the spatial arrangement of distinct areas of the cerebral cortex ? Insights into functional processing streams indicate that areas are arranged stepwise, such that adjacent spatial position along the cortical mantle represents functional gradients. Having been largely restricted to describing processing within specific sensory modalities, how do these principles generalize across modalities and extend to the surrounding association cortex ? I will present recent work describing various features of a principal gradient in cortical connectivity that spans between primary sensory/motor areas and higher-order transmodal association regions that in humans are known as the default-mode network. This arrangement suggests developmental mechanisms giving rise to the spatial distribution of cortical functions, and provides an anatomical scaffolding for investigating the propagation of information at both local and distributed spatial scales.

Résumé : The human brain has an astonishing ability to recognize faces. Yet, there is still very little agreement in the scientific community about how this fundamental brain function should be optimally measured. Here I will advocate the use of fast periodic visual stimulation with a variety of methods to capture the human brain’s efficient, automatic and rapid visual discrimination and generalization processes subtending face recognition.

Résumé : Functional neuroimaging studies of time perception frequently employ duration judgement tasks (“is this stimulus shorter/longer than another ?”), which typically identify a frontostriatal network for timing (SMA, inferior frontal cortex, basal ganglia). Yet duration judgements are not the only way of measuring how accurately time is perceived. Being able to predict when relevant events are likely to occur allows us to orient attentional resources to the predicted moment in time, thereby enhancing how quickly and accurately events are processed. Speeded response times (RT) to temporally predictable events are therefore another, more indirect, measure of the internal representation of time. Indeed, they may even be a more suitable method for studying timing in cognitively fragile populations. In contrast to duration judgement tasks, the performance benefits of temporal predictability implicate left parietal cortex in a context-independent manner. Neuroanatomical differences in duration judgement versus temporal prediction paradigms reflect distinct functional mechanisms for processing the same underlying representation of time, which itself may be represented more fundamentally in context-specific sensorimotor processing regions of the brain.

Résumé : What determines the spatial arrangement of distinct areas of the cerebral cortex ? Insights into functional processing streams indicate that areas are arranged stepwise, such that adjacent spatial position along the cortical mantle represents functional gradients. Having been largely restricted to describing processing within specific sensory modalities, how do these principles generalize across modalities and extend to the surrounding association cortex ? I will present recent work describing various features of a principal gradient in cortical connectivity that spans between primary sensory/motor areas and higher-order transmodal association regions that in humans are known as the default-mode network. This arrangement suggests developmental mechanisms giving rise to the spatial distribution of cortical functions, and provides an anatomical scaffolding for investigating the propagation of information at both local and distributed spatial scales.

Résumé : The human brain has an astonishing ability to recognize faces. Yet, there is still very little agreement in the scientific community about how this fundamental brain function should be optimally measured. Here I will advocate the use of fast periodic visual stimulation with a variety of methods to capture the human brain’s efficient, automatic and rapid visual discrimination and generalization processes subtending face recognition.

Résumé : Functional neuroimaging studies of time perception frequently employ duration judgement tasks (“is this stimulus shorter/longer than another ?”), which typically identify a frontostriatal network for timing (SMA, inferior frontal cortex, basal ganglia). Yet duration judgements are not the only way of measuring how accurately time is perceived. Being able to predict when relevant events are likely to occur allows us to orient attentional resources to the predicted moment in time, thereby enhancing how quickly and accurately events are processed. Speeded response times (RT) to temporally predictable events are therefore another, more indirect, measure of the internal representation of time. Indeed, they may even be a more suitable method for studying timing in cognitively fragile populations. In contrast to duration judgement tasks, the performance benefits of temporal predictability implicate left parietal cortex in a context-independent manner. Neuroanatomical differences in duration judgement versus temporal prediction paradigms reflect distinct functional mechanisms for processing the same underlying representation of time, which itself may be represented more fundamentally in context-specific sensorimotor processing regions of the brain.

Résumé : What determines the spatial arrangement of distinct areas of the cerebral cortex ? Insights into functional processing streams indicate that areas are arranged stepwise, such that adjacent spatial position along the cortical mantle represents functional gradients. Having been largely restricted to describing processing within specific sensory modalities, how do these principles generalize across modalities and extend to the surrounding association cortex ? I will present recent work describing various features of a principal gradient in cortical connectivity that spans between primary sensory/motor areas and higher-order transmodal association regions that in humans are known as the default-mode network. This arrangement suggests developmental mechanisms giving rise to the spatial distribution of cortical functions, and provides an anatomical scaffolding for investigating the propagation of information at both local and distributed spatial scales.

Résumé : The human brain has an astonishing ability to recognize faces. Yet, there is still very little agreement in the scientific community about how this fundamental brain function should be optimally measured. Here I will advocate the use of fast periodic visual stimulation with a variety of methods to capture the human brain’s efficient, automatic and rapid visual discrimination and generalization processes subtending face recognition.

Résumé : Functional neuroimaging studies of time perception frequently employ duration judgement tasks (“is this stimulus shorter/longer than another ?”), which typically identify a frontostriatal network for timing (SMA, inferior frontal cortex, basal ganglia). Yet duration judgements are not the only way of measuring how accurately time is perceived. Being able to predict when relevant events are likely to occur allows us to orient attentional resources to the predicted moment in time, thereby enhancing how quickly and accurately events are processed. Speeded response times (RT) to temporally predictable events are therefore another, more indirect, measure of the internal representation of time. Indeed, they may even be a more suitable method for studying timing in cognitively fragile populations. In contrast to duration judgement tasks, the performance benefits of temporal predictability implicate left parietal cortex in a context-independent manner. Neuroanatomical differences in duration judgement versus temporal prediction paradigms reflect distinct functional mechanisms for processing the same underlying representation of time, which itself may be represented more fundamentally in context-specific sensorimotor processing regions of the brain.

Résumé : What determines the spatial arrangement of distinct areas of the cerebral cortex ? Insights into functional processing streams indicate that areas are arranged stepwise, such that adjacent spatial position along the cortical mantle represents functional gradients. Having been largely restricted to describing processing within specific sensory modalities, how do these principles generalize across modalities and extend to the surrounding association cortex ? I will present recent work describing various features of a principal gradient in cortical connectivity that spans between primary sensory/motor areas and higher-order transmodal association regions that in humans are known as the default-mode network. This arrangement suggests developmental mechanisms giving rise to the spatial distribution of cortical functions, and provides an anatomical scaffolding for investigating the propagation of information at both local and distributed spatial scales.